Infrastructure Asset Inventory – Lessons from New Zealand Experience

Ross:

And we’re just going to jump forward to “Inventory”.

We really want to talk about that because if you’re starting again, and if you’re starting, then one of the things that you’re going to need to do very very early on the piece, and then continue doing well with good quality is an asset inventory.

And we’ve had the full plethora of experience on inventory across New Zealand. We’ve had municipalities and authorities that have done really well with it and we’ve had others that have really just made a complete mess of it.

Grant:

I think some people have really got bogged down on this area of New Zealand, and we’ve just gone in circles or where we’ve been lost in the forest as you said earlier Ross.

And I think that comment that we’ve made about fast delivery, sometimes it’s just actually getting the bones of it down in understanding what you’ve got in progressively improving.

I think that we spent a lot of time in New Zealand and whilst some activity areas have got some excellent information that’s taken 20 years to get to that. And perhaps they could have made a bit faster progress had they been a bit more focused earlier on.

Ross:

Well, I think also that the real risk of any technical professional. Be that an engineer or an accountant or an economist is that you’re dealing with very discreet calculations and very discreet pieces of information that you have confidence are correct.

So you don’t go and design a highway bridge hopefully, you don’t go and design a highway bridge on a back of an envelope. You know, you are actually, you have a fair bit of math.

We’ve had municipalities and authorities that have done really well with it and we’ve had others thathad really just made a complete mess of it. – Ross Waugh

Grant:

That’s really part of our professional training isn’t it? We like to do things well and consider risk and ensure that we are covering off all of the issues but maybe if we just need – some time it’s the case of getting some information out of some people’s heads because people are retiring and moving out of the workforce.

They may well have huge amount of information about your asset inventory walking around in their head and when we lose them, then we lose that information.

What I found is getting that out of people’s heads but and recording that information quality – that if Fred actually told you this and he remember when it was built 40 years ago. That’s a good bit of information to record.

Ross:

It is. So now we’re talking about in computer speak terms, we’re talking about grabbing some metadata with the inventory information.

So I have a piece of information, look I have a pipe there, or a park bench, or a road or whatever it is, a light. Now, how did I know I’ve got that?

And so I might know that because I gone up a very detailed survey with the GPS set at a millimeter accuracy level.

But I also might know that because my supervisor came back with a piece of paper and said – we have got one of those there. So I need to record the accuracy of the information.

How I obtained it? How confident I am about all the parameters that we have collected?

Now two mistakes we made – well going back to the 1990s and since.

One is we tried to collect too much detail and information on individual pieces of kit, or roads.

And the second thing we did was we try to collect far too much, small detail.

And the trouble is, you don’t get resourced for that and generally, you ought to have one big hit of the start where you’re outsourcing or you have a big team.

But often the resourcing levels for the inventory collection and maintenance aren’t what they should be. And if you attack at that level of detail from the word go, which is your professional inclination to do so.